Willow Beach Race Report

On my way to Kingston for the Southern-Eastern CX Challenge, I had been planning to stop and race at Willow Beach. Of course a late night Friday catching up on some work and a lack of pre-registration nearly had me decide that sleep was a better option. With my new later race time racing Elite men, I was able to roll in comfortably in time to get dressed and think about warming up.

Warming up consisted of riding one lap of the course with a few others after the 11:30 race, and rather than warming up it really was more like cooling down with the amount of cold water/mud spraying up from the bike. Needless to say the course was downright soupy in spots. There were puddles that when pedaling your foot would become completely submerged in at the bottom of the pedalstroke, and there was mud deep enough that I didn't see anyone successfully ride it in at least one spot. With no traditional double barriers, there was still 3-4 places requiring dismounts: a set of stairs, a ditch that was risky to ride, deep sand coming off the otherwise-ridable beach and a muddy section too deep to ride. I attempted to ride the latter two, but was running them for all of my race laps. For more perspective check out some photos Wes took during the morning races.

The field was very small with 11 Elite men and 4 Master 1s, which was kind of nice as my first racing Elite. Still, there was enough depth that I'd have to work hard nonetheless. The start was surprisingly less crazy than expected and I found myself not far off of Erik's wheel, which I knew would not last. By the time we came off the beach I was back where I should be, in the bottom 1/3 or so trading spots with Wes and Jay.

For the most part the race was a battle against the elements, though I did succeed at dropping a few people and ended up having a decent battle with Jay. He had put some serious time on me at one point but I guess a rolled tubular cost him about half that gap, and a pull from an M1 helped slingshot me into the muddy slog in the field where I cranked along slowly, but fast enough to close down the gap. As we got back on our bikes Kyle Douglas came by, lapping us making our current lap the last. Happy to see this happen, we both pushed a bit harder, and in the end he came onto the lawn a bike length ahead of me to take 6th place, putting me 7th ahead of a few others - not last in my first Elite race, this is good.

I learned shortly after that Erik had hit his head on a tree and was strapped to a spinal board for safe measure. Turns out he spent a few hours like that but after a trip to the hospital and an x-ray, he was cleared with no serious injuries. We're all very happy to hear he's ok but this is just one more item to the list of bad luck he's had.

I cleaned off my bike a little in the lake, but even after this it was still muddier than it's been, and possibly muddier than my bike got in any cross race last year as well. After the drive into Bath to stay with Nick and Melissa at Nick's parents', I cleaned it off pretty well and set it to dry for the next day's race with the Eastern Ontario folk.